


The Bottom

by Albrecht_Starkarm



Category: Black Lagoon
Genre: Character Study, Depression, F/F, F/M, Girls' Night Out, Relationship Woes, Self-Loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:50:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9786182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albrecht_Starkarm/pseuds/Albrecht_Starkarm
Summary: What does it mean to preserve what's most precious to you if you can only admire it from afar?  Is it still worthwhile to let your hopes die quietly if it will keep that light alive, or is it better to touch it, even if you'll smother it?





	

“Jesus Christ, it's _hot_! It's just so fuckin' hot here! What the fuck is wrong with this place? Didn't you used to have goddamn air-conditioning or somethin'?” Eda just stared down her glass at the ambulatory pain in her ass that'd decided to settle in _her_ perfectly peaceful sanctuary. Yeah, it was hot. It was fucking Thailand. What the hell did she expect?

But some half-wasted berserker whirlwind of belching aggrieved psychosis in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a goddamn cutoff tank top that left less to the imagination than one of the streetwalkers' getups had decided to crash _her_ tranquility. This wasn't really a usual thing for her, this _peace_. It wasn't even scheduled.

She didn't _get_ weekends. Between the assholes from Langley screeching down the line about some new political _something_ and the perpetual hustle with the Ripoff Church, shit, even _she_ was starting to call it that, _this_ , some sainted real silence, was about as rarefied as Revy actually shutting the fuck up.

And she was there. Squawking like a parrot with Tourette's a sleazy Hollywood pornographer had hand-raised. Slumped back in the chair, both of them bathed in the soft bronze glow that trickled through air dusty with the brooding stillness to which the _building_ had given its damn name. Did people talk about something being as calm as a fuckin' dive bar?

No. Still and silent as a church. As a cathedral. Great and glorious, a place of worship animated with generations' most earnest belief, the fidelity of illiterate shoeless peasants squatting in the presence of their middlemen to god, dispensing tokens of spiritual relief for their miserable and empty lives; they breathed passion into the building, erected it with their sweat, with their hunger for _something_ they could even call meaning. The Ripoff Church did much the same thing; it just trafficked in another currency entirely.

But Eda knew that she'd be fucked if that Mother Angelica doppelgänger caught Revy here again. The woman was seriously cracked; she'd need to be to run an operation like _this_ , bothering with every one of the church's trappings. Not that it wasn't a church; not even that Sister Yolanda wasn't a real nun. Crime and the Church were comfortable synonyms. It was the fidelity, the _authenticity_ the bat's canted mind commanded from everyone.

She'd shake that gnarled jowled head at her like a surly penguin in her adorable little veil and coif, and Eda would know that she was _fucked_ . The admonition, steeped in the preening celestial, would be reserved for when they were alone; it wasn't for mixed company even to _intuit_ that there was anything but perfect placidity in God's own house.

But damn she knew she'd hear it.

And then Revy's compulsive blaspheming, well...

“Chrissake, Eda, aren't you even goddamn _listening_ to me-”

“It's a fucking church, Two Hands. Can't you keep it even a little holy for just five _fucking_ seconds?” Eda's voice was thick and heavy and dark enough to startle her. It was the harvest of those weird pubescent moments when she'd snap into silence, jarred into dumbstruck incredulity that, _damn_ , that was her voice. It was even sterner now, graveling from her years-long three-pack-a-day habit that marinated it like curing in a smokehouse. The whiskey probably didn't help.

“Jesus, what crawled up _your_ habit, _Sister_?” Revy was reclining again, like always, one of her jungle boots encrusted with the city's creeping filth snapped against the battered altar's rim. It was sacrilegious just sitting there.

Eda knew it. She wondered if maybe she'd just started to assimilate some of the Old World superstition that had strained through the frogs more than a century ago when they threw it up. Sure, there might've been ten or fifteen native workers still entombed in the foundations, but she figured they would have told themselves that was just a _quicker_ passage to God.

It was beautiful, sleek stone and peaked roofs of burgundy slate and stained glass like tangrams of effulgent jewels tucked into its every pane. A soft kiss of the celestial burned with the dying daylight through the window over her shoulder, casting Revy into a Caravaggio-perfect chiaroscuro.

The chick was pretty. Eda had to admit that. She didn't really wear whatever accumulated hell Eda knew had catapulted a half-chink bitch from Mott Street to _this_ suburb of the City of Dis. Roanapur was infernal. It was the perfect place for a church like _this_ one.

No one came here for salvation. A clutch of dumbass Knights of Columbus tourists even tooled up in their goddamn tour bus one morning, still sleeping it off and reeking of whores' perfume and the night's lurid debauches, looking for absolution. Sister Yolanda and Eda had seen 'em off with enough judgment and fire and brimstone to send 'em to a real priest when they'd slumped off home.

Revy didn't wear it anywhere, anyway, but the eyes. They were like Eda's; and not. Everyone had their own badge of distinction chiseled into the stare. For Revy, it was a flat cold hardness, an animal glint that wasn't the perfect emptiness others had.

Eda's was unreadable; this was by design. Eda was a woman who didn't even exist. Sure, Edith Blackwater had a passport in her name; there was a social security number and the life had been lived in a great constellation of banalities back home in the States.

Just like Wilhelmina Bridges and Sarah Miller and the huge pointillist swarm of other lives that were only names hibernating quietly in computers back in the great bleary electronic giant that was the real power directing the senile lumbering beast she called an employer.

But she was on her own here. She had her mission; she had her long con, and that was it. And that was _great_ . It sure as hell wasn't sucking up to superiors and having sleazy pols they expected her to, ah, _entertain_ clap their grimy paws on her legs, gurgle that they had the _best_ position for her.

“Fuck you, Two Hands.” Revy was definitely wasted _now_. There would've been an answer if she _hadn't_ been. Something nasty; something with enough profanity to have Richard Pryor racing off to join the Trappist Monks. She'd already finished a bottle of cheap tequila, some shit non-brand that'd fallen off the back of a freighter before falling off the back of a truck and then breaking bulk and falling off of a smaller truck.

Shit, maybe it was one of the shipments the Lagoon Company had jacked.

Eda leaned back now; at least her shoes were _immaculate_ , those cute little flats that felt like nothing more than slippers. They were comfortable. They were also stupid and useless for streets like Roanapur's, paved in broken glass and discarded needled dreams and enough liquor, undigested or otherwise, to fill a swimming pool.

A fan swept its peahen's feathers in a languorous breath beside her cheek. It was worthless. Without the AC, yeah, it just stirred the heat like brushing a ladle through bubbling stew. The night was sultry, like every one. Even if there had been a storm brewing on the horizon with those dirty scuds that bubbled indigo and neon bile with lightning, it still would've been fucking hot.

And she still wore the habit, wet wool on her skin.

Couldn't the Church compromise on _cotton_ , at least?

There was the underwear that she needed, also. Not for her _bodily_ welfare, but even the pretension of being a nun had been a challenge to whatever she called her femininity. It was habit.

Jesus, she was about to pass out giggling from that pun.

“What's so fuckin' funny, Eda?” Revy was slumped on the altar now, cheek flattened against her palms clapped on the clammy wood that almost swam with the sweat sweeping from Revy's skin, matting her cheap plum-stained hair to every inch. It traced a sleek wet meander down her nape, smeared itself on her left shoulder. The right was still bare, scrawling with that dumbass hip tribal tattoo like a terminal skin condition that slithered to mid-biceps.

“Nothing. Just thinking about how you must've thought that dumb fucking tattoo was cool _once_ -”

“Shut up, bitch. Don't talk shit about this tattoo. Do you know how much it hurt getting this goddamn thing?” It was the usual low-burn psychosis. The bitch's hands didn't even lunge for the pieces she always slung in those shoulder rigs.

“Makes it even dumber, bitch. Anyway, why'd you come here? To whine about the weather? I _told_ you- y'know what, didn't we have this conversation, like, just last week?”

“Thought that cheap bitch would've gotten the AC fixed by now.” Revy's voice was flat, mirthless; one finger brushed her lowball back and forth, lubricated with the condensation that'd slathered itself across the aged lumber, resilient even in the heat's relentless warp and torture. “Don't you need to keep your shit climate-controlled?”

“Yeah, well, she fixed _that_ -”

“Then why the fuck're we sitting around _here_? What about the basement?”

“You wanna drink around Sister Yolanda? She's still adding up how much _you_ owe for your ammo, Two Hands.” Eda caught the guilty smile that flitted over Revy's lips. It was rare to see them unoccupied with _something_. With the cigarettes, the liquor, the fountaining obscenities, they were almost _never_ empty.

Eda definitely had her pegged for an oral fixation.

Something deep and visceral and Freudian. Shit, she hated psychology.

Eda's eyes flitted up to the compulsory grotesque crucifixion, an image of human anguish, the perpetual memento mori and guilt on which the whole damn rotten edifice was founded. He died for your sins. Now _be grateful_. Pay up, peons. Christ didn't do it for free. You think he wanted to run a charity?

“Remind me never to buy my shit from you again-”

“Didn't you say you'd never shot ammo _that_ accurate before? Those fucking Hydras are good bullets, y'know. I use them in my Glock. They never jam; it's like feeding oiled _grease_ -”

“Yeah, and it's like pissing away good champagne, Eda.”

“You just aren't as good a gunman as you think, Two Hands. It's that technique you've got-”

“You're questioning _my_ technique? _Mine_? Jesus Christ, Eda, those really _are_ fighting words. Y'know, I've got you pegged. You're a goddamn masochist.” And _now_ Revy was getting worked up. Eda could feel the smile crease deeper than just her lips.

It flourished through her gut.

It _inhabited_ her. This was what she craved. It'd become something compulsive; hell, obsessive-compulsive. Maybe it was something predictable. Eda's life was control; unbroken discipline that masqueraded as agency and was only a simple surrender to the total helplessness that was _everything_ in her world.

Revy was fucking _chaos_ incarnate. It was fantastic. Just watching her was like an anorexic staring through an all-you-can-eat's windows.

“You think so? I'd say _you're_ the masochist-”

“Oh, real mature.” Revy's half-gloved fingers were fine, long, callused from the wheezing violent exercises that stained her skin from bronze to scarlet to indigo, from the pistols, from life's daily grunting toils on that torpedo boat that lacquered her with the unctuous aroma of avgas and engine grease. They snatched up one of the quarter-empty bottles, sent at least three shots crashing into a jumble of tequila-stained ice, swamping it, sending a few bitter threads spattering across the altar.

“Jesus, Two Hands-”

“I'll wipe it up; don't worry. Goddamn, do you have panties to get in a twist under that thing, or are you goin' commando?” Revy's technique was... Underwhelming. Dragging away a shred of that glorified bra she called a top from her tits and mopping up the dross.

“You're a real pig. Y'know that, Revy?”

“Yeah, yeah. At least I don't have some kinda nun fetish.”

“It's called a _uniform_ , okay?”

“I didn't know nuns wore garter belts.” And _now_ there was that shit-eating smile the bitch always got. Sneering with a fanged mirth over her glass, raised up to just _deepen_ the glazed-over bleariness in the eyes.

“Who's been watching too much porno again-”

“I don't watch porn. That's fuckin' shit. What kinda chicken-chokin' _loser_ would get off to somebody else fucking?” Damn, wasn't _that_ a little defensive? Eda didn't push it; just sipped a long dainty pull from her glass, letting the ice's slow silvery chime wash through their ears before giving another push.

“What about that cute friend of yours? Rock?” And that was it. If a stab at Revy's marksmanship would light the fuse, that'd rip it out like tearing off a mouse's tail and stick a hydrogen bomb in its place.

The eyes weren't just _pissed_ ; Revy was perpetually about a half-second from lapsing into that.

They got _dangerous_.

“What about him?” Revy's voice, also. It was deeper than Eda usually heard. A storm's slow patient coalescing on the horizon. Her captain, Dutch, that huge black riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in anabolic steroids, called it Whitman Fever.

Eda couldn't've thought of a better phrase for it.

“You know what I'm talking about.” And if Revy was verbally a linebacker, crunching into every altercation with a Soviet tank's delicate grace and tact, Eda at least qualified as a ballerina.

She'd won State in forensics.

Not that it mattered now. Arguments in a shithole like Roanapur tended to be resolved with more lead than brain cells.

Still.

“No, I _don't_ , Eda. So why don't you pull your head out of your asshole so you can talk to me like a goddamn human being and _maybe_ I'll understand.”

“Trouble in paradise, _Rebecca_? What? He can't get it up or somethin'? Or is _somebody_ having intimacy issues?” And that was definitely enough to have her sweeping the bottles off the table. But not that night.

Eda was fucking incredulous.

Legitimately incredulous.

And she made a point of believing everything; it didn't profit anyone to indulge in America's abiding faith and pastime, cognitive dissonance.

Revy just slumped back, let her shoulders' wiry sunuosity work through a long lingering shrug that was something that probably should've announced a change in glacial epochs. The jaw worked left, right, and left again, like struggling with a wad of gristly steak or maybe a broken tooth.

Eda's eyes made a point of confronting her with the _weirdest_ surrealest most Haight-fucking-Ashbury shit she'd seen since she made the mistake of trusting that afro-freak asshole from the strip club that his mushrooms were just enough to get her _relaxed_.

Revy was just staring at her. No bitchy snap; not shit-headed roar at her. Nothing. Not even a snipe at her parentage.

Total. Fucking. _Silence_.

Couldn't believe her ears, either.

“Did I just go deaf or somethin', Two Hands? C'mon. Where's the shit about me bein' some cracker from the sticks with sibs for parents?” Nothing. The chick was in a fugue state. “You finally pass out with your eyes open-”

“I'm awake, Eda.” Jesus.

And not even a _cunt_.

No _bitch_ to be heard.

“So, uh...”

“It's nothin'. I'm not feelin' the booze, and it's gettin' late. I should probably fuck off. Dutch probably needs help or something with the engine or some crap like that, and Benny's busy with his computer nerd shit.” This was _not_ the chick she'd expected.

There was a serious _grievance_ in Revy's eyes.

“Oh, c'mon, bitch. I didn't mean to make you piss your cute little Daisy Dukes. I'll give you some big girl panties if yours are all wet-”

“See ya later, Eda.” Revy's palms slapped at the table, her chair tearing a long tortured _screech_ across the wooden floor before she hauled herself upright with _something_ like steadiness.

“Hey, hey! C'mon! We were havin' a moment, Two Hands!” This wasn't supposed to be Eda's evening. It was- well, fuck, it was almost _banter_. Playful, like some shitty comedy with thirty-five-year-old teenagers if they'd been raised by wolves and had gone to Auschwitz Finishing School. “Chrissake, Two Hands-”

“Ain't this a church, Eda? Don't you got any faith at all?” Damn, the bitch was calling it over her shoulder. So Eda stood.

Planted her stupid fucking leather slippers onto the wood and bellowed an object of absolute desperation.

“You shoot like shit, Two Hands, and you're a goddamn pussy, and we both know it! Everybody in this whole fuckin' city knows it, too! You'd be nowhere without that crew of yours. So why don't you just take the money you've earned and retire to Miami so you can compete with people closer to _your_ skill on the shuffleboard court?” And it was just fucking perverse.

Watching the familiar rage spark up and then just flatten itself again like a cigarette's dying ember in the rain.

Even the finger that greeted her was as noncommittal as a long-suffering sigh.

“Hey, Revy!” Well, Eda knew the bitch hadn't driven, so she'd be _walking_ at least. The habit was a nuisance, but it was still shapeless enough that she could gin herself into a reasonable jog if she dragged up the skirts like some Brontë lead and scrabbled after her.

And she did. 'cause this shit wasn't normal. They'd been having the perfect start to a perfectly rancorous girls' night, and then Revy just, shit, for Revy, _that_ was flipping out. Drawing and threatening to reenact Calvary with a fucking nine-millimeter instead of a cross? _That_ was just Tuesday.

“Revy, c'mon, what's the matter with you? You on somethin'?” At least she closed the distance quickly enough.

Revy was already past the transept, vanishing into the heavy darkness that blanketed the pews in a feathery black nothing.

“Just high on life, Eda. Get lost, will ya? I don't need you bitchin' at me like a goddamn stray dog.” Revy didn't even _snarl_ it. It was totally venomless; a toothless pathetic _sulk_. Why the fuck was she sulking?

“What's with you, bitch?” Didn't even shrug off the hand Eda clapped on her shoulder. “You in a hurry to get somewhere?”

“Just don't need to get insulted by some jumped-up child-molester.” Hey, that was _something_.

“Good one, Two Hands. But I'm not really into the brats.”

“Yeah. Guess you've always been more into people who can't fight back.” Revy finally batted off her fingers.

“What's gotten into you, Revy? Hey, hey, is _that_ what this is about?” Yeah, it was high school, but why not? Everything they did was high school, even if Revy had probably never seen one unless she was ripping off lockers in her early years.

And Eda could see it. Juvenile delinquent. She'd probably been grifting, hustling, since she was in diapers. Extorting other sniveling punks for their pacifiers.

So Eda danced, bounced, slithered with a nimble grace with her ass clasped against the doors that had been conceived for giants, God's house and God's glory and it'd damn well better be _sized_ for God, also.

“Maybe _he_ has, huh? Oh, is that it? He bad in the sack and you're still mopey about it-”

“Fuck off, bitch.” The brushoff, _again_.

“Hey, what's with you?” The door was still flung aside; not like Eda could curtain _everything_ with her ass, lusciously broad as her hips were. The night steeped, enrobed them, stitched itself through Eda's skin. At least Revy had the more sensible costume for _this_ , stupid as it was. “You're usually so _combative_ , Revy.” So Eda just shrugged off the Two Hands shit. “C'mon, Becky-”

“Don't you _dare_ fuckin' call me that. Nobody calls me that.” Shit. Eda _had_ forgotten that; and she'd forgotten exactly what it meant. Or what she could only intuit it meant, anyway. She'd trialled it exactly _once_ , with hopes it'd piss off _any_ woman or girl named Rebecca older than three or four, expecting that it'd be a mist of gasoline wafting on the psychic bonfire named Revy.

Imagination had never even whispered what _actually_ happened.

It was this.

Not even that Whitman Fever shit. It was something so deeply _candidly_ psychotic that Eda was almost relieved she had even the tiniest bit of sacerdotal superstition from that stupid fucking costume. Because she was _reasonably_ sure she'd seen Satan or one of His works flowering across Revy's face. It was a savage transmutation. Most everyone in Roanapur had _some_ sort of damage. Screws loose, forgotten, maybe just tossed out to save weight; most everyone had surrendered some part of the whimsical oxymoron they called humanity.

And most everyone had their facets and façades. But Revy had become a fucking werewolf; the eyes blackened and the face twisted into a savage sawtoothed snarl and, whatever the strength animating Eda, pulsating through every muscle, it wasn't nearly enough. Eda had flung herself into fighting since she was a barefoot little hillbilly, shoeless daughter of Alabama poverty; could take anyone, the thick-chested dull-eyed farmer fucks that trolled the land with a slack-jawed hunger for anyone warm to fuck or to kick, never mind the cunts in the private school to which a feel-good-think-of-the-white-niggers scholarship had taken her.

But she'd felt it. A _fear_ in that instant, because Revy was suddenly nothing even a little human. Whitman Fever. It was worse than that. She was a Panzer division thundering into Poland. Muscle became iron and it was absolutely inflexible; Eda couldn't break it. Revy had borne down on her, eyes twin portals to _one_ bleak abyss, and she just seemed to float on a cloud of black malevolence.

_Don't ever fucking call me that again, or I'll make you regret having one goddamn nerve in your body._

Eda believed it, too. People had their limits. She'd seen them; she _knew_ what they meant. Whenever you transgressed them, you always hoped that they were shackled and fettered and pinioned in heavy steel and _you_ held some heavier weight of control over them, or that'd be it.

“S-shit, Revy, I'm sorry-” Because she was being flung onto her back again. It was the damnedest stupidest thing.

A line from that Tom Selleck film, _Quigley Down Under_.

_I said I never had much use for one. Never said I don't know how to use it._

Revy must've learned her brawling _somewhere_.

One of the Cutlasses flashed quicksilver in Revy's fist, stabbed under Eda's chin. It wouldn't kill her; it would be universes worse than that. It'd scythe through her jaw, the hollow-point deforming and splintering into a savage ripping copper rose in full blossom and it would rearrange her dentition enough that she could possibly aspire to sip soup through a complete set of lips in six or seven years and a howling anguished eternity of rehab and plastic surgery.

The moon hung low, an ugly gibbous sneer that was perfect devotional tenebrism for the godless horrifying scowl that ornamented Revy's face. The lips drawn away from teeth that weren't fucking teeth but a rabid wolf's fangs; the eyes defied any language at all.

Eda could draw.

Maybe.

“You ever fucking call me that again, and I won't be nice enough to just rearrange your corn-fed face, you cunt.”

“Yeah.” That answer exhausted the air that hadn't festered into poison in Eda's lungs. Revy's breath was flammable, but there was something deeper, heavier, the essence of blood and carnage and turned earth.

It didn't frighten her on any profound and spiritual level; that had been Eda's perfume for a decade.

But it was the visceral biologic horror, the animal need to flinch away from it.

“You'd better promise.” And now it was just soaring higher, higher, higher, some demented fucking Icarus who couldn't even see it was the _moon_ peering through the brittle wispy clouds.

“Jesus Christ in Heaven, I promise on everything holy-”

“I don't mean like that. Promise _right_. Like you fucking _mean it_.” What the hell else could that _mean_? But Eda wasn't in a position to challenge it; Revy's long firm fingers had become titanium, cinching closed the habit's collar around her throat, and a diseased neon gem had broken and scattered its facets through her eyes.

“I- I promise- I promise. What more do you want from me, Revy?”

“Promise, you dumb slut.”

“What do you want me to say?” At least Revy'd slackened it a _bit_ ; only a micron but it admitted the night's breath that was cool satin on her throat. Sunset was a fleeting phenomenon in the tropics; the sun had sunk into nothing and the moon was slouched in its poise on the sky and only Roanapur's lights shimmered in their hollow enticement.

They were no salvation. There were the others, but Revy'd already have a bullet through her septum if she even _imagined_ bleating out a plea for help.

No.

She'd just weather this. Whatever it was.

“Say it _right_.”

“Jesus Christ, did your nut finally crack or somethin'? I apologize; I promised-”

“Say it _right_!” She was just fixedly orbiting around _that_.

“Rebecca, for chrissake-”

“Good.” And then the pressure slackened and Revy stood, a robotic cool ease, the steel's satiny rasp against her rig's well-oiled leather a graceful punctuation to an absolutely graceless psychosis.

“What the fuck's wrong with you, you crazy bitch?! Draw'n' awn _me_!” And she'd even goaded Eda into loosing that iron control.

Loamy well-fertilized soil rich with the Alabama sun splintered her genially neutral _nothing_.

“What a fuckin' hick you are. I always knew it. I might be gutter-trash, but you're trailer-trash, Eda. _Edith_.”

“Fuck you, bitch.” And it was back, smoothed down like Eda's habit. She even made a point of tucking her sunglasses' slim roseate shards back on her nose. “What's wrong with you? So I forgot you freak out about that name.

“I thought you hated _Rebecca_ , too.”

Revy was perfectly quiet. It was weird, that fugue state _silence_. Just confronting Eda with those empty cold eyes.

“I do. I'm tryin' to get used to it.” It was the weirdest admission Eda had heard since some guy with his toenails being jerked out by some overmuscled Israeli motherfucker confessed to having an irrepressible passion for huffing cake flour.

“Whuh?” And that was Eda's answer then, too.

“I- I'm trying to get used to it, okay? Hearing my goddamn name.”

“'s the matter with Revy? It's your handle, right? Just like Two Hands.”

“What kinda stupid fuckin' name is Revy? It's- it's weird, stupid shit, right?” And now the swivel-eyed psycho was clapping a palm on her nape, kneading it with a slow patience like wringing a migraine out of her skull. “It's what a little girl would have.

“Revy. Sounds like a baby name.” Well, this was just inspired insight.

“Revy, where's this coming from? I mean, c'mon, this ain't like you-”

“What's like me?!” And this was definitely _something_ , also.

“Shit, what is this?”

“Do- do you speak goddamn English, _Eda_ , or am I maybe not putting in enough _hyucks_ for a hick like you-”

“I'll let that go because you've _clearly_ lost your goddamn mind.” Eda still jammed out a finger at Two Hands like a pistol's hungry snout. “You're on something, right? What? What're you using, Revy? I know you had that horse phase-”

“Fuck you. I'm not on shit, Daisy Mae.” This shit again. “I'm not on shit. I'm barely even drunk. Not as drunk as I'd like to be.”

“Are you going to start making sense, or should I just drive your ass home?”

“I'll be fine. I wanna kill someone, anyway.”

“Yeah, right. You could walk through the worst fuckin' ghetto in this hellhole wearing nothing but those boots and nobody'd even _look_ at your ass for more than five seconds.” And Revy just _stood_ there.

Her answer was thick-voiced, wretched.

“Yeah. You're prolly right.”

“Since when would that piss you off?”

“I'm a freak, right? A fuckin' freak.” This was... Not the night that Eda had expected when Revy _very_ predictably hammered down the cathedral's door like a Hugo character, clamoring for sanctuary from the swelter and finding nothing but cracked ice and enough booze to debilitate an elephant.

And now Two Hands had her arms snapped out akimbo and Eda felt an ambivalence like Revy was teetering between plastering the rustling grass with her brains or sobbing.

Or maybe both.

“Shit. What's wrong with you, Revy-”

“That's what I'm talking about, you dumb cracker! Aren't you fucking listening?!”

“You really know how to ask for help. Want me to drive you home? Not too fucked up yet-”

“I don't wanna go home.” Wasn't that something Eda had, uh, _never_ heard.

“Come again?”

“I've been to your place before-”

“Yeah, and, uh...” The word _awkward_ was about as appropriate for that as _uncomfortable_ for a razor-edged colonoscopy. Eda was scrutinizing her from the corner of an eye now, meditating on something she'd read about there being finer clarity in your peripheral vision.

Rods and cones and night vision.

The Japanese perfected it in the Pacific War.

And it was still Revy and not some inscrutable mutant impostor.

“You serious? Is this some kind of weird robbery-”

“Like you'd have anything I want but your huge-ass lingerie collection.” Well, she had her _there_ , anyway. “Who has that many pairs of stockings?”

“So I like them, dumbass.” And there wasn't even the usual bitchy snap back at her. “Listen, if you're gonna act so abnormal, I'll call the men with butterfly nets. The fuck's gotten into you?” Should've added, _Except for that cute Rock kid._

“So, are you gonna take me in, or not?”

“What about Dutch? Didn't he need help?”

“He can suck it.” Well, that decided it pretty well. “Besides, I'm off tonight. Dutch said the _Lagoon_ 's pretty much in drydock 'til he can fix the damage the Vietnamese Navy did.”

“Oh, I heard about that. Pretty nasty shit.” _That_ was comfortably neutral territory.

Two Hands was still the weirdest travel companion she'd had since a Burmese smuggler who'd run afoul of Sister Yolanda serenaded her with _O Sole Mio_ from the trunk before she could dump him off to face The Lord's judgment. Eda traditionally made a point of _not_ driving; it was sure as hell easier not to struggle through Roanapur's miserable tangle of wheeled iron whose motorists were about as conscious as Miami's catatonic sun-addled tourists and even _less_ troubled with traffic laws.

An asshole like Benny, whose road-rage was rivaled only by his total indifference to confining himself to the right lanes, was almost a triviality next to the _real_ assholes that prowled its highways slopping with sizzling sodium-vapor lights that twisted the universe into archipelagos of shadowless brimstone.

Everything else was blackened but for the skyline's jagged gems that shimmered in ironical blue and red like a police cruiser's gumballs. Then again, was there anything better for a city whose cops were a sainted metaphor for its elemental corruption?

Her engine didn't race like Benny's cockmobile; she sure as hell felt no need to compensate for a lacking masculinity with a clutch of hammering pistons whose imagery even the densest psych school dropout couldn't fail to miss. Hers was a simple black Civic; something plucked off of New York's or Tokyo's streets and comfortably repurposed, a pittance for something that didn't even need bum plates. License plates were a triviality in Roanapur. If Watsap's men hadn't issued you _their_ special tabs and you didn't look like a tourist that'd cause problems if you shook 'em down, you were fucked.

She had one, tucked into the window. Its iridescent light was a nauseating companion to a hangover when she drove through the morning's slashing wet light that sluiced through every sense like the seashore's rotten fug of industrial runoff and the drug mills' pungent sharp stink and the harbor's accumulated greasy mist; it all festered like castoff seaweed and nature's irresistible death, purulent and ugly.

Everything was.

“Jesus, Eda, could you have gotten a shittier car than this?”

“Coulda bought a Ford Escort.”

“I stand corrected.” Revy'd slapped one childishly unlaced jungle boot against her dash, kneading the city's shit in a grimy crust across the faux leather. Eda didn't start anything over it; not tonight.

Revy was volatile enough that she'd either jerk open the door and take a gainer onto the pavement or plaster the contents of Eda's head in thick wad of wet meat and pallid bone and hair across the window. Eda'd slipped off her veil and coif, but there was still the habit and those dumbass shoes.

Revy's every answer was a sullen murmur now, like a chastened brat. And Eda still knew that pushing her _here_ would definitely not be the most inspired judgment, so she said nothing, comfortably confined the conversation to innocuous monosyllables, let Revy whine.

“Why do you have this shitmobile, anyway? Can't this goddamn thing move any faster?”

“It's a _Honda Civic_. The hell do you expect?”

“I jacked an Escort once that could do more than this-”

“Bullshit.”

“No bullshit. The thing had some kinda racing engine in it. Could hit one-fifty-”

“That's a _double bullshit_. I might not be some kinda greaseball gearhead like your pet computer nerd, but I _know_ a Ford Escort can't do one-fifty unless it's kay-pee-aitch-”

“It could. I'm serious. I outran a fuckin' police cruiser; saw the guy spin out, hands up, swearing his ass off at me. It was great. I think it was out near Detroit.” Revy's laughter was an anemic nothing. Eda finally pulled into away from the highway's serpentine coil into what was a glimpse of the surreal: An authentic suburb, or something like it.

It's not that they didn't exist. Clearly, they did. People actually _worked_ in Roanapur; not many of 'em, at least not legitimately, but they were there, however endangered. Middle-class white-collar workers; not the laborers and the hustlers and hucksters.

It was a tedious place, not gated because there was no _need_ for gates when the managers included protection money in the rent; and the protection money was paid reliably to an anodyne holding company named Crestland Security Services, Limited, which incidentally owed its existence to a constellation of shells that dead-ended in the Caymans but paid generous interest on unspecified debts at regular intervals to the Bougainvillea Trading Company. That was the legal reality.

The _truth_ was that everyone knew the russki psychos' goons were always on twenty-four-hour alert, ten minutes from crashing into the neighborhood with technicals and armored cars bristling with enough firepower to think about relitigating the Battle of The Bulge. Anyone who might've stolen away even faintly intact would know that her nuts were worse than bloodhounds.

The second your trail was caught, and it _would_ be, with enough CCTV blanketing the place to shame the japs or the Singaporeans, well, that was it.

Flee to Utah or Uganda, it wouldn't matter.

They'd find you.

And when they _did_ , even if you'd only filched some middle manager's wife's replaceable pearls, that was it. You'd be digesting your own cock along the five or six days they'd preserve your useless life's meaningless shriveling dregs before they finally let you bleed out in some squalid gutter.

So doors could be comfortably unlocked, and there were even lawns, a jovial frolic of children at midday and barking dogs and pretty wives, local or otherwise, without much compunction about savoring a serene untroubled idyll without cowering in terror of crooked swaggering pigs or the friendly neighborhood rapist. She was even on speaking terms with some of the expats.

“Jesus, I'd forgotten how _white bread_ this neighborhood is. I can't believe there _are_ neighborhoods in this hellhole.” Eda could; there would always be. It'd started as a military installation, and there was still that faint kiss of the Superfund site in its ambiance. A lavish leafy suburb, arboreal, tangled with angular geometry's thick constricting seams, there was an ineffably martial order in everything.

Eda's doss, and that was the only word she'd allow herself for the quaint little bungalow tucked into heavy waxen foliage that scrawled with perpetually wet fractal grace along its lithe sloping angles, was comfortable, nestled behind one of the gates that was still just something _fundamental_ for the neighborhood, even if she made a point of setting herself apart by actually closing and locking the cigarette pack of spear-tipped steel pickets.

It slapped open with metal-on-metal's surly squeak and a leaden _clang_ ; a dog's distant yelp was the night's only rupture. It was perfectly quiet, serene at even ten-fifty at night.

“Jesus Christ, you'd think this was a graveyard and not a neighborhood. This is the most disgustingly bourgeois thing I've seen for a _long_ fuckin' time, Eda.” Revy made a point of pronouncing it as _boo-geois_.

“Yeah, yeah, I'll make sure to get a place at the Ramsap Inn tomorrow for Her Ladyship. Just get outta the fuckin' car.” There wasn't a garage; not that you needed one on an island whose temperature rarely plunged beneath about eighty-six.

And that was one of those nights. It steamed Eda in her habit, and fantastical images of a perfectly chilled Japanese beer were already pirouetting behind her eyes. Rummaging for her keys, Revy's puerile boot-rapping converged with her heart's throb.

“You're a fucking six-year-old, Two Hands. Y'know that?” The door was squat, nestled in an awning that reduced Revy's eyes to savage amber shards.

The door groaned open; Eda still just stood there, a palm clapped on the Glock's clammy plastic grip, fingers patient.

“The fuck is with you, Eda-”

“Fuck you, Two Hands. This's my evening ritual.”

“What? Waiting for some strong handsome stranger to creep up behind you an' put it to you?”

“You're a romantic one-”

“Well, I know you're not happy unless you're getting your ass reamed out on a nightly basis.” The answer was a subdued little grunt; Eda finally ushered Revy through the door, figuring she deserved whatever was waiting.

Nothing but the endless reedy chirruping spit up from crickets with voices like Maria Callas and bustling bodies like miniature poodles with huge fragile bat wings. The door clattered closed, air-conditioning greeting them with a cool satiny breath.

It was bliss. Eda could actually fucking _breathe_.

“Whew! You've got air-conditioning, at least.” This was probably the fullest gratitude she'd expect from Revy.

“Don't you, Two Hands?”

“Well, yeah, but my place's a dump. You've seen it.” Shit, was _that_ it?

Nah.

It couldn't be that Revy'd gotten so lazy she'd make _this_ kind of production to avoid some remedial housekeeping.

“Take your fucking boots off, Revy. You're not _that_ much of an animal. Aren't you Chinese? Don't you orientals always _do_ that-”

“I was raised in a fuckin' tenement. Sue me.” But at least they clopped off, clattering on the heavy hardwood that sprawled out in horizons that felt as endless as the sea and sky in the oppressive gloom.

Eda luxuriated in it, rejected any possibility of leavening it with a single light. Hers was fine night vision, anyway, and she was delighted that Revy wouldn't penetrate dignified obscurity's veil in how her habit actually _worked_. It was a trade secret, littered with furtive compartments and jumbled inscrutable layers, wound together in a fabric matryoshka that only that scarred Russian could appreciate.

So she slipped off _one_ of them; eased out of her ridiculous shoes, savored the cool floor through gauzy nylon that ran stagnant and dank with sweat. There was some tiny kernel of sense in reality again, even if she was sharing its immediate geography with Revy.

They were friends. Or something like it. Eda knew that; they sure as hell wouldn't have accorded each other the smallest _micron_ of trust if they hadn't been. It was nurtured, patiently and haltingly, mutual understanding and the simple camaraderie in a belief-beggaringly shitty job in a belief-beggaringly shitty city. Roanapur was a Satanic playground. And the blindingly ugly irony in it was that even the freaks and subhumans and beasts and cold-eyed demons that stalked through it still could only reconcile themselves with the idea of it being a way station to something else, to something that had real cachet, real _worth_. It was a shitheap.

Eda often wondered if even Bao seriously thought he'd be retiring in this place. But it had its own irresistible gravity, and it wasn't only the black hole it represented in even Thailand's comic sense of the law. It was something else. She felt it. The way its outstretched talons became a seductress' soft well-manicured fingers, laced through your skin, deeper still, and then stitched themselves barbed and intransigent into everything.

She could be gone. Langley could find another agent to run this shit. She could have been done and retired four years ago. She'd even made a short-timer's calendar for herself, slashing out the days not with the usual magic marker's chiseled black strokes but a buck knife.

When she hit twenty days and a wakeup in-country, it just occurred to her.

She'd stopped actually cutting the damn thing ten days before that.

And then when the day arrived, she just shrugged into her habit and went to work. That was it. It'd slithered into her life, settled like a rattling nest of vipers in her gut, and it wouldn't fucking leave. So she didn't ask it to.

Boss Chang?

Balalaika?

Please.

They still had that gaudy expat fiction staining their eyes, kneaded into every word. They were there for the cash, for the power, to build a base that'd just be a jumping-off point into greater and more grandiose things.

And they'd travel, yeah, but they'd find a rationale to stick around. There were always _problems_ here, and that was the problem. It wasn't something that could be set aside, abandoned to its own devices with mechanistic ease, because it wasn't the well-lubricated phantasm of modernity people expected from the New Economy. It was the reality.

Screaming, messy, rancorous; it was the perfect anarchy that capitalism's real fulfillment made.

“Hey, Eda, you gonna turn on a light?” Revy just stood there. Too patient for Eda. It didn't make any fucking sense.

“Is this some kinda grift? Are you here to rip me off, Two Hands?”

“Do I look like I want any of your secondhand fell-off-the-back-of-a-child-molester shit? I've got my own shit I hate.” Well, there was that, at least. “I'm just waitin' for you to turn on the fucking lights. Do I need to walk around with my cigarette lighter?”

“Smoke in this house, and you're gonna need to choose which asshole to shit out of, Two Hands-”

“Christ. What's with you? You smoke, Eda.”

“I don't smoke at _home_. Huge difference. I smoke to take the edge off, Revy. And when I'm here, in _my_ house, the house that I own,” or at least the house in Edith Blackwater's name, “I don't _want_ an edge.

“I settle down and I read or flip on the idiot box and I pretend that I don't need to deal with all of life's insufferable crap for just a little while. So don't smoke in my house.”

“Fine, fine, I won't smoke. Got any chaw-”

“You're disgusting. You really are, Two Hands.” Eda still let her hand obey muscle memory's numb guidance, coiling off to slap at a switch with a Tomahawk's easy accuracy. The lights flared on, dim, amber, spilling from a clutch of fixtures wired to that one toggle. It was simple; they could still be twisted on and off at the source.

Not that she ever bothered.

“Whew, it's as... White as I remembered-”

“So sue me. I like living-”

“Jesus, did you get Martha Stewart to do this place like some 'sixties housewife's den or somethin'?” And now a committed psychopath was critiquing her furnishings. All said, this still wasn't anything near to the weirdest day Eda had ever had.

Not even in the top fifty.

Bare feet slapped gracelessly like an obese elephant crammed into that lissome wasp-waisted arched-backed beauty across the hardwood, fleeting wet impressions like ghostly footprints gathering and bleeding off into the cool air-conditioning. Revy flopped down onto one of the chairs that even Eda had to admit were something dragged out an age when the Beatles were still something people their parents' age _complained_ about on the radio.

There was even a full fucking wet bar. Not that she could complain. Crystal roosted in light-scattering iridescence on a credenza; a new-model big-screen leered at them with its flat stupid face from a thick rattan hutch.

“Hey, a new tee-vee, Eda. Movin' up.”

“It was cheap. Fell off the back of something.” Eda made a point of snatching up the remote, tossing it like a live grenade at Revy.

It was caught thoughtlessly; just nestled on the table beside her.

“Television's shit. I never liked it much. Jesus, what's ever on? Not like they run the good stuff anymore. 'specially in Thailand. Unless you got satellite.”

“Who _doesn't_ have satellite, Revy?” It was something that announced the middle-class. A maid, gardener, and a parabolic dish grasping at the surrogate thoughts that whipped through the atmosphere, a few threads in a huge throttling spider's web that throbbed with commerce. That was all it was; its only use.

Selling stupid shit to stupid people.

“Guess you got a point. Even _I_ got satellite. Not that it does crap. I still don't watch it.” What the _hell_ was with her? The chick's fingers teased a languid maze-run along the buttons' needlessly huge acreage.

It was universal remote: VCR, TV, probably a missile silo somewhere in North Dakota.

“Just sit here, Two Hands. I'm gonna change.”

“What? Into some cute little pajamas?”

“Into something that doesn't make me look like a penguin.” Eda did; quickly. Wasn't her _traditional_ evening rite. That was a prolonged exercise in self-affirming luxury; steeping in the bath's steamy heat, bathroom door flung closed, windows thrown open to embrace the sticky perfume that curdled in the feral gardens crammed with wild tropical flowers that rioted in their jumbled aromas.

She'd linger, smear herself with elegant lotions and creams, and then slip on the fragile fabrics that would just let her sprawl out on a mattress that needed to be measured in hectares and savor the sultry air whirling and whipping around her with the old colonial relic that slung from the ceiling like a giant peg-legged tarantula.

Tonight was something quick, comfortable; tee-shirt that still enameled itself on her tits with a tension that was half design and half the simple fucking impossibility in finding any clothes in Thailand that hadn't been made _for_ Thai chicks. They were either vertiginous stick-figures or short-ass curvaceous goddesses and so every shirt was either a crop top by default or a titty shirt.

She chose the titty shirt; a pair of shorts that clung to her hips with a sleek grace that was more latex and less cotton.

White.

White upon white and golden-blonde.

“Well, lookitchu, Daisy Mae. You're gonna be the belle of the hoedown-”

“Eat it, Two Hands. What? Want me to slip into something a little more _comfortable_?”

“I know you've got enough lingerie to open up your own whorehouse. What's with that, anyway?”

“You just don't get it, Revy, do ya? Women actually like _wearing_ something pretty sometimes. Look at that getup.”

“What? You don't like my Daisy Dukes?”

“Oh, they're a wet dream come true, Revy.” Eda made a point of muttering that into a whiskey bottle that she'd unstoppered and then closed again with a sullen little _thunk_. It wasn't a whiskey night.

Eda hovered beside the wet bar, lingering on the wares, finally settling on gin.

And closed it.

It wasn't a gin night, either. Not with Revy there.

“Want a beer, Revy?”

“Yeah. My drunk's kinda wearin' off, too.”

“I could always drop your ass off at the Yellow Flag and let Bao listen to you whine-”

“Nah. It's too far now.” So Revy really _was_ committed to this, huh? Eda didn't bother with the kitchen; a mini fridge squatted like a pygmy rhinoceros on the floor, Eda illustrating her nimble grace with bare toes, jerking it open with a chiming serenade in bottles clattering together like tenpins in the door.

She twisted down, snatched up a pair of Sapporos.

“The hell do you drink this Japanese stuff and not Singha?”

“It's either this or nothin'. I hate the Thai swill.” Eda's fingers were quick, practiced, with a Swiss army knife planted on the wet bar's face, cracking off the caps with carbonation's soft rush.

“Fine, whatever. That jackass wet-behind-the-ears asshole always complains he can't find this stuff. I don't taste the difference.”

“It's all the gunpowder you're huffing; it's probably killed your olfactories.” Eda settled down with breath's low _whump_ from her chest, slumped in a chair opposite Revy's. A low shin-crunching glass coffee table, thick and still so fucking transparent you'd be destined to hurtle through it seeking a path along the room, lay between them.

Eda set her beer on it with a hollow _click_.

“Yeah, yeah, always somethin'. Can it really do that?” Revy quirked an eyebrow; let it soar over an eye that was almost painfully confused. There was still the animal edge, but it was a bestial befuddlement, like a wolf whose jaws just crunched into an iron bone tucked into a buck's haunch.

“Yeah. It can. So, how about that dumbass?” Eda still grasped at _anything_ that'd have Revy roaring back into her usual combative bulllshit.

“Yeah.” Nothing. Just rolling the condensation-slick beer between her palms.

“Well, if _you're_ not interested, maybe I should have a go at him. He's pretty cute. And, besides, that whole sweet and innocent thing, that's gotta be an act. I mean, c'mon, there's no guy _his_ age who blushes like that around chicks unless he's a real _freak_ in the sack, right, Revy?

“C'mon. What? What's his fetish? Feet? Schoolgirl stuff? Hey, _is_ he some kinda masochist? He'd hafta be, sticking around _you_.”

Just complete silence.

“Oh, don't tell me it's something _really_ weird. I mean, okay, with the crap that Rowan brings in from Japan-land, I wouldn't doubt it. Is it shit? Piss? C'mon, Two Hands. Hey, he doesn't want dogs or weird stuff like that, right?

“Seafood so raw it's still breathing? Old Fryface told me she saw this movie awhile back where a chick was getting pumped by a goddamn _octopus_. What's with the Japanese, right?”

“Yeah. That'd be...” Eda was sure she'd heard _something_. Revy's voice had shriveled to a miserable ghost of a whisper.

“That'd be _what_? Jesus, how _weird_ could it be? It's not little kids, right? 'cause, I mean, there're limits-”

“He's a goddamn _virgin_ , okay?” Well. That was...

“Whuh? Oh, c'mon, he's, what, twenty... Something? Twenty-five, right, at least? He's outta college-”

“I don't know how old he is; age never came up. I just, y'know, it was going okay, Eda, all right? You're a fuckin' cunt, but at least...”

“Where's this _high praise_ goin', Two Hands?”

Revy made a point of prolonging _one_ pull on the beer into a spectacle that would have even the queerest guy's pants bursting.

“I just- I mean that, uh, you're... You're not really after Rock, right, Eda? You just do that to piss me off, doncha?” Was it true?

Half-true.

“I'd fuck him.” That was true, too. Not exactly an ordeal of an admission.

“You'd fuck a goddamn elephant.” The familiar Revy hadn't _totally_ shriveled up, at least. “But, y'know, I mean... He's really good-looking, Eda. He is. I like him.”

“What's with the slumber party stuff, Revy? Are you going to ask for some pajamas soon?”

“Fuck you, bitch. I'm trying to... I'm barin' my goddamn heart here, okay, and you just- you- y'know what? Fuck you, Eda. Just fuck _you_.” Eda felt it.

A threshold crossed.

Revy was springing up.

“Fuck you. Forget about this; I thought at least _you'd_ be able to talk to me like a goddamn adult, but-”

“Sit down, Two Hands-”

“Screw you-”

“Rebecca, sit down, okay? I'm sorry. I just... I'm used to us havin', y'know, a certain _dynamic_.” Eda had stood now, too, and it wasn't usually obvious with Revy's boots and just that roaring presence that enfolded her like Death's own black aura, but Eda probably had at least three or four inches on her. “Sit down, all right?”

“You called me Rebecca-”

“Well, you said you wanted to get used to it, right? Siddown.”

“You really are a bitch.” Revy still did. Slowly, sullenly, persuading herself and Eda, impotently, that this was _her_ agency, her choice. She wasn't just being an obedient little dog.

“Yeah, yeah, and I'm not the only one.” Eda's voice still had softened. Not a gooey aural treacle that could corrode enamel at fifty yards, but something that she never would've expected for Revy.

Then again, she never would've expected to say _Rebecca_ with anything but sneering sharp bitchiness, either.

“What's with this, Revy-”

“I'm trying to get- get my _ears_ around hearing Rebecca, okay? It feels weird hearin' it. Nobody calls me Rebecca but that asshole, Rowan. Oh, yeah, and your pirate nun of a boss. And who fuckin' cares about them. The only people that called me Rebecca were the fuckin' protective services people.” Some help _they_ clearly were. Eda didn't bother contributing that.

She'd read the dossiers.

Revy's jacket was a fucking overstuffed parka that would've seen an anemic through a Russian winter.

“So... Why are you so obsessed with it now?”

“Like you said, Revy's a dumbass name.”

“I think Rebecca's a pretty stupid name, too-”

“Oh, yeah, 'cause Eda's just fuckin' _gorgeous_.” Revy was bristling; it was stupid, prodding her with that. “I-”

“Sorry. I'm just, y'know, I'm used to _us_. Our usual rapport, Revy, Rebecca, whatever. So what's the deal?”

“He deserves a better girl, I think.” What the fuck was this?

“Ah, come again-”

“You heard what I said, Eda.” Eda had heard. Her senses had, anyway. But it was like sewing a corn field with vodka. It made no fucking sense and it would never blossom into anything more than what it was.

“Well, yeah, but... I mean, what kinda shit is it to say that-”

“He's innocent, y'know? I mean... Not totally. I get that, Eda.” The beers were already warming to a tepid sour bitterness. “I get that he can't have it _all_ together perfectly if he's in a place like this.

“So I worry about him. He's just... He's still pretty much a fuckin' innocent. That thing with the vampires, that really fucked him up. For awhile. Talkin' to that little bitch, seeing her get pasted like that, that's sure as hell a million miles away from watching me waste people with guns, people who are fighting back, in the heat of the moment.

“He told me- Jesus, he's such a loser.” Revy's jaws worked, grinding out the words in a slow miserable rasp that barely pricked above the fridge's dull sigh and thrum. “He told me it suddenly just felt all _cold_.

“He was _crying_ , Eda. Can you believe that? After we got back to this fuckin' hellhole. I thought he was fine, with all that great soliloquy about how she could look up at the sky, be happy. But he wasn't.

“He totally flipped his shit. Started drinking and drinking and then he wouldn't stop crying. Got so goddamn bad even Benny had to excuse himself. Jesus, you ever see _Dutch_ look like he's awkward? That happened. So I just sat there with him.” Revy had forgotten her beer; it was there, incidentally cradled in her hands, but that was it. It sat there, still and rotting slowly, like everything else in that city.

“Figures.” Eda wasn't being facetious; it was true. It was obvious that she'd do it.

Eda had heard most of it from Revy before, anyway. Even a brush with those freaks still haunted Eda; that little girl's fine soft hands on her chest, that diseased comfort, that _ease_ with all of it. The stink of the soul's rot and blood's rank perfume.

“What's that s'posed to mean, Eda?”

“Just that. It figures you'd sit around with him. You've got a soft heart for that kid. He's older than you; he's more like your younger brother.”

“Yeah.” The words came slowly, miserably, seeping out like purulent blood from a rotting abscess. Revy's eyes fell to her feet, slipped back up to Eda's. They were the familiar cold flat amber. “I sat there with him. For a long time.

“I'd never seen him like that. He'd cried before; he's kind of a weepy guy when he gets drunk, like a lotta dumbasses. But it's always about abstract stuff. But this- this was some kinda philosophical breakdown. I know he'd started liking it here.

“Loving it here. He'd launch into these big dumb pronouncements about what kind of festering heart of darkness Roanapur is, but he'd never leave, and it wasn't only 'cause they had him declared dead back in Japan. In the Real World. That's bullshit.

“He still had his passport, his papers. He could've just walked into any police station, any consulate, said, Y'know, there's been a misunderstanding. And that would be it. Paperwork gets misfiled all the time. I think he knows that. But that thing with the vampire chick, that was... It was just totally unfair.

“Most people who wash up here, they haven't had the best lives in the world, but they're grown up. They've really passed the point where you can point to somebody else and say, It's your fault. But those kids, they were just fucking _kids_.”

“It got to you, too, didn't it, Revy?” Eda had no real answer. “I had a fucked up childhood, too-”

“You didn't get gang-raped for the camera and made to fuck your goddamn brother or sister or whatever and torture and murder other kids so _you_ wouldn't get torn up.”

“No. You're right about that.”

“I felt like I was lookin' in a goddamn funhouse mirror when I saw that little bitch. No matter how many people I kill, I _have_ killed, I _will_ kill; no matter what kinda shit I went through; no matter what I've done or I will do, that little girl still saw more hell in her life than I ever could.

“And Rock saw it, too. That's when it started to freak me out a little, sitting around with him. I think he saw... I mean, he got all poetic and shit about how much I musta been like that four-eyed maid psycho. But he's still got this heroine-worship thing for strong women like us. Tough as nails. All that crap.

“That four-eyes cunt was still just something that... Y'know, for better or worse, it's still different. We got our power _faster_. You know what happened to me, right? I know who you are; I know what you do.” It'd never come up; Eda didn't really have any doubts about it. Revy might have had a fifth-grade education, but she wasn't stupid.

Canny, savvy, cagey.

Yeah.

All those cute circumlocutions people _with_ education used to call gutter-trash _smart_.

Revy was smart. Smart enough, anyway, to intuit what she was.

“Yeah, Revy.”

“So you get it. I blasted my old man's face into a pillow. I got a gun fast; I got _powerful_ fast. Powerful enough. I saw the truth. It wasn't like those kids. They saw another truth entirely. Rock didn't deserve to get his cherry popped about that so soon, so- so _goddamn_ rudely, I guess. It was all just an adventure for him 'til those kids arrived.

“He'd been scared, but I don't think he was ever really _horrified_. The whores, the slaughter, the desperation, it was all just ambiance to him, 'cause I could see what he was thinkin'. It wouldn't happen to him. A fuckin' _company_ of badass mercenaries and a helicopter gunship got siced on him, and he walked out with nothin' more than a few scratches and bruises, some new friends, and great stories to drink on at a new bar.

“A new life. He hated his life back in Japan. I don't think he needed _us_ to show him that. But he doesn't belong here, Eda.”

Eda could answer.

There were the words; great diamond points she could stitch together into constellations achingly eloquent or as crass and filthy and common as she needed. Edith Blackwater was as much a fabrication as anything else. But they were useless.

“He doesn't fucking belong here. He's too good, Eda. He's too good. Even Benny, that little blond pussy, _he_ can tune it out; just turn it into white noise in the background. Not Rock, though. He likes to talk about living in the twilight and all this shit, but it's bull.

“Everybody lives in the twilight; that's what people _think_ is the light. But it's not. You get it, right? You say it's bright outside because you've got the _belief_ in you.” And belief was a poisonous delusion; belief was what people who licked toads and shot dope and got high on musty words in formulaic books had. “But you know different, right?

“I sure as hell do.”

“So what's the problem? Rock's a dumbass-”

“I like him, Eda. I like him. What're you, some kinda goddamn simpleton? What's the problem? It's not that Rock's a dumbass. It's that he's- chrissake, are you retarded or somethin'? Is this 'cause your parents were brother and sister?” Eda wisely said nothing. “It's because he's a _good guy_. Not one of the good guys.

“A _good_ _person_. Somebody who breaks down and bawls his eyes out and goes half-catatonic for a week because he heard something horrible and ugly from a little girl who was just one of the unluckiest ones, the ones god doesn't have time to think about when he's giving millions of bucks to turkey-necked preachers on the tee-vee.

“And that's bad shit for me, Eda. I try. Goddammit, I do. I try to be as mean as a junkyard dog to him, and what does he do? He gets me to let him pet me on the goddamn head. I wanna lie down on his lap and pant. I'm a wild rabid animal, Eda.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“But I feel- Jesus Christ, I feel _gentle_ with him. Sometimes, I even start watching what I say, because I don't want... I don't want him to think I'm just some kinda stupid savage. And then I feel like a retard and I make it even worse so he won't _think_ I'm thinking that.” This was definitely not the night Eda had expected.

Combative, yeah.

Not just head-butting but skulls _clattering_ together like bighorn sheep.

And, both of them wasted, the inevitable dark-eyed collision; hands and fingers laced through soft hair and skin stained with sweat and splashing across sheets blackened with them, and the tumble and writhe and heave and Revy's snarl that she better not fuckin' tell _anybody_ about this, and Eda telling her that she doesn't make a point of bragging about bestiality.

And now Revy's eyes looked almost _vulnerable_.

There was that wintry sheen still, but it was brittle like the first tenuous slick that would have even a kitten plunging through into the abyss.

“You ever feel like that, Eda?”

“Shit, you're asking _me_?”

“You- you're not just a dyke, right? Or, like, are you?” Blinking at her. “I mean... You get a lotta action with guys, right?”

“Yeah. Sort of.” It was about fifty-fifty between boasting to piss off Two Hands and the reality. It was definitely true, too, that Eda tended to gravitate toward the X chromosome. Probably some lingering _something_ from the private school's frilly cultish cloistered femininity. “I mean, what're you talking about, exactly?”

“You ever... Really like a guy?”

“Nah. Not really.” It was true. Eda definitely didn't feel _that_. The simple reptilian joy in savoring the heat and sinewy strength in a man's body, _fine_. But affection? Intimacy? Fuck, no.

“Jesus, you really are a slut-”

“You asked, Two Hands.” And there was still that familiar febrile flush. It calmed in an instant. Eda at least had the responsibility to be something like the grownup in this. “Anyway, y'know, I've... I've fallen hard for a few girls.”

“So, you really are like that, huh, Eda?”

“Yeah. Maybe. Guys are nice if they're good-looking, have good bodies, but, ah, fall in love-”

“W-who said anything about _love_?” And now Revy was just sputtering, pathetic, ridiculous.

“Fine, _like_ -”

“Whatever. Whatever. I mean... So, y'know...”

“Y'know...?” Eda could probably _intuit_ where broadly this was going. And a flight east from Detroit still could be destined to Philadelphia or Tehran. “What?”

“You know what I mean!”

“Jesus, Revy, I _might_.”

“You ever- you ever been with a _real_ cherry?”

“Yeah. A few times. I mean, it's kinda relative. If you've been with a chick who's never slept with a woman-”

“That's not what I'm talking about, _Eda_. I'm not saying Rock's been livin' it up like the Village People. I'm saying he's got _no_ experience.”

“How the fuck do you know, anyway?”

“It's just... We were fooling around a little, okay?” And Eda still couldn't be _that_ grownup. It was a visceral big sister impulse.

“Oooh, _really_? When was this-”

“Jesus, Eda, could you act more like a six-year-old?”

“Hey, is his willy big-”

“Fuck you.” There was still the chortling. Both of them. Revy's smile pricking up along that sharp slash, and still so fucking _vulnerable_. “I didn't get that far.”

“Really? So, ah, how far you go? I'm guessing you didn't show him _really_ why they call you Two Hands-”

“Say that again, and you're gonna hafta learn how to breathe out of your asshole, Eda. I'm serious.”

“Fine, fine, whatever.”

“You know I got problems, Eda.” Shit, Eda did. Revy wasn't what you'd call _restrained_. Ever. But when she drank, those inhibitions that were breakwalls against the _real_ psychotic tsunami that she always managed to shove offshore _went_. She'd heard them.

The howling and the roaring and the bullets ripping through the still black night, strobing muzzle flashes, accuracy absolutely _unassailable_ , even if she was shooting at targets that weren't there. Even the sobbing.

The arms wound around her knees and her knees ground into her chest and a fist brandished against Eda's palm on her shoulder.

“Yeah, I do, Revy-”

“You don't fuckin' know. There's a big goddamn difference. But, y'know, it just... It felt like it didn't matter at all when I was with him. It felt good. Y'know, thinking, _He's screwed up, too._ Maybe not as much as I am.”

“Don't give him that much credit.”

“Hah. Yeah.” Revy finally noticed the beer again, tossed back half of it in a frothing rush. “But, you know, we were fooling around, 'cause... 'cause he comes to my apartment a lot.”

“Serious? You let people in that shithole?”

“Hey, it's... I keep it a lot cleaner, now that I know he's comin' around.” Eda didn't really doubt it. “Anyway, it just happened. We've always- always had that _thing_ , y'know. I've told you about it. You always tease _me_ about it, which I fuckin' hate.”

“Not blind, Revy.”

“Yeah. And... And it just finally _happened_. We've had a few, like, _close_ moments before. When you know you're touchin' somebody's hand, and you don't say anything; or their knee's too close to yours-”

“Jesus, are you livin' in some kinda kiddie romance novel?”

“Screw you.” Revy's answer was as venomless as a garter snake. “But we'd never really _done_ anything before. Not really. I think, y'know, one time, when we were at the office, he was _this_ ,” Revy's fingers about a steroid-shriveled dick's breadth apart, “Close to making a move, so Benny'd hafta come in and start squawking his nerd shit about something he wanted Rock to translate for him.

“Some kinda Japanese porno comic book. Rock got all... All blushy about it. I called them both fuckin' losers and went to the Yellow Flag.”

“Mature.”

“Shut up.”

“Even more.” They both knew it; even Revy was chortling over it.

“He looked like somebody'd sucker-punched him in the gut when Benny came in. So, y'know, I had him over to talk about... Whatever. I don't even remember. I was getting really hot. I was half-wasted. Rock was- he doesn't handle his liquor too good.

“But it felt _right_. I was just _waiting_ for him to make his goddamn move. Thinking maybe he's really a fairy and just won't come out and say it. So, y'know, I make myself available.” Eda didn't need to resort to her imagination.

She'd seen it. Not with guys; that was something about as exotic as a three-toed sloth dancing the lambada with Nancy Reagan. With her, though. That vulpine grace, slipping closer; the knee's brush against Eda's and then Revy's breath's soft waft over her cheeks.

“And he finally does it. He's just so _awkward_ about it, too. Just like a fuckin' pansy-ass office boy. He- he doesn't even put his hands on me. Just dips in and... And his lips taste like mint. Jesus Christ, the guy'd actually taken some _mints_ before when I got up to take a leak.”

“Always the true romantic.”

“It's kinda- kinda closed-mouthed but it's good. He's got good lips for a Japanese guy. They're soft, y'know? Like a girl's.”

“I knew it. They're pussy-eating lips-”

“Yeah. That's what I thought.” Revy could only have total equanimity about that. It was fine praise from a lizzie like Eda. “And then we just go at it like drunk monkeys.”

“Sweet.”

“'til the time comes for, y'know, the under-the-clothes action.”

“Wait, let me get this straight. Not even second base-”

“I could see the coach telling me I'd get _home_ that night, and then suddenly Rock just shuts me down. I mean, what- what _guy_ does that?” Revy was incredulous.

Eda, also.

A collective sigh blasting out of their lips.

“He's a good kisser. I mean, y'know, maybe _that_ shoulda said it all. Most people get lazy; they get into bad habits when they still get laid 'cause people are desperate fucks. He was- was real sweet and gentle and he didn't just push his tongue down my throat like a goddamn Saint Bernard.”

“I hate it when people do that-”

“ _You_ do that, Eda.”

“I know. I just hate it when other people do it.” The smile was wide, ridiculous.

“Asshole. But he was a good kisser. Really- really _sweet_.”

“You said that-”

“Shut up. I'm sayin' it again.”

“What'd you do?”

“I tried to keep it in; not just rip it all off and eat him alive. I mean... I got problems, okay? But I was loose enough but not _too_ loose. And with him, I feel... I feel safe, dumb as it is. That fuckin' moron couldn't fend off a goddamn girl scout, but I feel safe.

“It's weird.”

“Nah. Not that weird.”

“Oh, how so, Doctor Joyce Brothers?”

“Well, y'know... Do you want me to get into the psychobabbly stuff?”

“Yeah, yeah, I watch _Oprah_ , too-”

“I'm serious, Revy. You want to know? He makes you feel safe because you- you feel like... If you _ever_ tell anybody I said something sappy like this, we're gonna find out just how much of a quickdraw you are.” Eda punctuated the hot-cheeked snarl with a finger stabbed out at Revy.

“Yeah, gotcha-”

“He makes your heart feel safe, I guess. You know, it's... It's like a harbor. It might be totally useless for keeping an enemy out, but it sure as hell can protect you from the elements. From anything. And that's what it is. He's...” And it was something else, obviously.

They both knew it.

That innocence. Tarnished, maybe, but verdigris was still fundamentally bronze at its core.

“Yeah, Eda. That's what it is. That's the problem.” And there it was. Again. Revy finished the beer's dregs, dropped it with a sharp _crack_ on the table. “When it came time to start getting naked, he just stopped.

“He said, Y'know, let's wait. Like we're at the junior prom or whatever and he just gave me his class ring or whatever. So we just kept kissing. And I got blue balls.”

“I know you don't have _those_ -”

“You can't say, _I got blue ovaries_. That's just fuckin' dumb.”

“Fair enough.”

“Anyway, I wanted it. _I_ wanted it. With a fuckin' guy. I mean... You know how much _that_ happens.”

“I didn't think it did-”

“I've had a few guys.”

“Seriously?” That was something that'd just been an object of speculation, and not often, for Eda. She didn't usually _like_ to heap thought on what went into her lovers.

“Yeah. I mean... Paying-”

“Jesus, Two Hands! You? I thought-”

“Yeah, well... I mean, whaddaya want me to say?”

“I always thought you might've, uh, taken the ol' _droit de seigneur_ with Benny. He's good-looking enough. Even Dutch. He's got a fantastic body. I mean, y'know, he's black; I dunno if you've got hangups about that-”

“Dutch is... Jesus, who knows about him? I've never seen the guy with a woman. I'm sure he has _something_. Probably that fuckin' torpedo boat. And Benny? Oh, he's got yellow fever like you wouldn't believe, but I'm not his type, and he ain't mine. Besides, that'd just be fuckin' weird. Just working with people you fuck?

“No way. Not that kinda casual crap. People get the worst ideas. Besides, I wanted to be _in control_.”

“I'd say so. That's one way'a doing it. You're, y'know...”

“Shut up, Eda-”

“You don't even know what I was gonna say.” So Revy was totally silent. “I was gonna say, You're a beautiful woman, Two Hands. You know it, too. You have a fuckin' amazing body and a good face and your hair's nice and- and you... You know, you... People like you.

“I mean, they're as afraid of you as a honey badger in an SS uniform riding an armed H-bomb. I don't think screwing some guy'd change that.”

“It wasn't that. I just wanted to do it my way, the whole way. It was weird. The first time, it was because I was horny and my hands weren't cutting it and I'd just gotten here and Big Sis told me about a guy she uses when she just wants it the way _she_ wants it: No talking unless she tells him to talk; no dinner-and-a-movie shit; nothing but pure _heat_.

“And it was... Bad.” Revy let her shoulders slouch down to her ascending colon. “He was really great-looking, like Big Sis said. He wasn't too pretty; wasn't too _ugly_. Handsome face, y'know? A perfect body, but not 'roided-up. And he was smart and polite and he groveled without making it obvious you were just paying him for his body.

“And it felt... Felt like nothin'. I didn't get off. I think he was starting to get bored, too, 'cause I just was laying there thinkin', Jesus Christ, I just wasted a hundred bucks-”

“Fuck! A hundred?! He must've been good, Revy.”

“It didn't do it for me. I mean, he _musta_ been good. He had a dick that was- was _big_ , but not too big, either. Everything about him was, like, was _made-to-order_. He did nothin' for me. So I thought, Maybe I need a _prettier_ guy, so I went with a sissy. That wasn't it. Maybe it's a guy who's-”

“I get the whole Goldilocks thing, okay?”

“Didn't work. I've done it with you, Chinglish, some other chicks, and that's it. At least I can get off that way.”

“Gee, I feel real special.”

“Fuck you.” Revy was obviously craving booze's numb comfortable nihil, and still waving it off. “Anyway... I just wanted to tell him, tell Rock, y'know, Don't worry about it. Let's do it now. I don't care how sloppy it gets; I don't care if you barely get one pump in before you go 'cause it's _enough_.

“I want your fingers on my tits; I want you to lick me, eat me out. I wanna go down on you and all that stuff.” Yeah, Revy was a true romantic. “But he just- he was so fuckin' _nervous_. So I- I dunno. I tried to get his hand up my top-”

“That's a long quarter-inch.”

“Yeah.” No snarling answer for that. “And he said he'd never done it before. So, y'know, I'm thinkin', _Duh_ , we've never done it. But he got all shy and- and he looked so embarrassed. Said he was a virgin.

“He thought I'd laugh at him.”

“And?”

“I...” Jesus, _did she_?

“Did you?”

“Not- not really. I- I mighta... I dunno. I thought it was weird. I was- was really tryin' to be nice, you know? So- so I didn't...”

“You _laughed_ , right?” Revy's eyes were more than downcast.

They were counting her toes and then slipping closed and counting them again, just to be sure none had grown in the interim.

“I didn't _laugh_. I said- I said I didn't think a guy like Rock'd still be a cherry at that age. And he kinda took it the wrong way.”

“You're a goddamn romantic, Two Hands-”

“I didn't mean it like that! And- and besides, y'know, I apologized.”

“You? Revy? _You_ -”

“So he knew I meant it! And a real apology an' all that stuff. Not just, _Sorry you're a dumbass, Rock_. He asked me to call him Rokuro, too, and that was... What kinda name is that? Rock's better. Plenty of guys have the name _Rock_.”

“Yeah. Rock Husdon-”

“Shove it.”

“So that's why you're so interested in getting used to Rebecca, huh?” It was fucking obvious. Revy was perfectly quiet, studying her fingers.

“Yeah. Guess so. He said... Y'know, he felt like that was one piece of Japan he was still carrying with him. I asked him why he still was. He'd dated before; girls liked him, I guess. He's a good-looking guy. I think so.” Eda said nothing about emotional subjectivity.

Rock _was_ handsome enough, anyway.

“Rock just said he never felt close enough to anybody for that. It's just- it's so _special_ for him.” What a fuckin' loser. That was Eda's only thought.

Not that it mattered if you were a cherry or not, but it was just incidental causality.

You were or you weren't, and who fucking cared either way.

If you got obsessive over _that_ , why not your first hangnail, or your first hemorrhoid, or your first bout of the tropical shits? What kind of Victorian horseshit nonsense _is_ that, fetishizing whether you've been touched or never touched?

It was BS.

“So, he's a cherry. So fucking what-”

“So fucking _what_? So fucking _everything_. Like, isn't it obvious? That's fuckin' everything to him, right?” Eda could only admire stupidity that stratospheric.

“Come again?”

“Ain't it obvious? Are you _that_ dumb, Eda? He's... He's an innocent. About fucking everything. I thought, y'know, at least he's had a woman before. At least we're on equal terms with _that_.” It was obvious.

And not.

Eda felt the easy answers start to slough off like moulting feathers.

“Uh...” Revy's fingers were spearing violently enough into her palms that the knuckles had slipped to a cadaverous pallor. “I- I mean, what do you mean, Revy-”

“Just _that_. I'm not. I'm not. I mean... I'm damaged, y'know, Eda? Somebody's already cracked the freshness seal and-”

“Christ, I get the message.” But Revy was...

Shit, grinding her palms at her eyes now.

“Revy, I mean-”

“You _don't_ get it. What was your first time, huh, Eda? What was yours?” Eda really had no answer; she'd already heard Revy's. “Mine was getting pushed down on the goddamn filthy floor of a jailhouse, okay, and it sure as hell wasn't just 'cause I had a _kink_ for it. What about yours, Eda? Huh?

“Huh? C'mon. What about it?!”

“It wasn't like that, no. Not with a girl or a boy.” Eda's answer was pathetic, thick.

“What was it?” Shit, Revy was actually crying. It wasn't bawling; wasn't violent wailing and gnashing of teeth and lamentation but her voice had dimmed to a quietude like the rippling of the creek beside her home, tucked deep in the dark woods, a patient slow lap at muddy shores she'd plunge her bare feet into and savor cold on callused skin. There were tears, thick and rheumy and curdling in her eyes.

“I... Y'know, what's it matter-”

“I wanna know.”

“First time with a girl? That was when I was thirteen. My roommate at this- this shitty private school.” Eda knew _that_ shouldn't ever be said. Shouldn't admit that kernel of reality, _her_ reality, the _**real**_ reality not named Edith Blackwater, into this one. “I was lonely. It wasn't 'cause I missed home. Not exactly.

“I missed my grandma. I hated my folks.”

“At least we have that in common.”

“My grandma was a great lady. She was this wiry old lady who still fished every day in the stream and who had skin like tanned leather and chewed tobacco like a sailor. I missed hearing her in the stream at five every morning, splashing around, yee-hawing about landing a lunker. I missed my room at home.

“I missed the few friends I had at school. The girls were cunts there. They were mostly rich kids and they thought I was trash. My roommate was miserable, too, because she... Y'know, she was shy and awkward and she was the kind of girl that _gets_ really pretty and just _looks_ ugly because she's awkward and hasn't grown into it yet.

“Braces and thick glasses and that stuff.”

“Jesus, quite- quite the life story, Eda.”

“Fuck you.” They were both without venom, both enervated, battered punch-drunk fighters exchanging the last few blows while they waited out the clock. “Anyway, my first time with a guy? It was with the janitor.”

“Christ, Eda, the fuckin' janitor-”

“What? He was _gorgeous_. I was, uh, sixteen, I think? He was only about twenty-”

“Fuckin' creepy.”

“He looked like a model. What do you want from me?” Eda was finishing her beer, also, craving _something_.

A cigarette.

Just one.

A fucking joint.

“So? I told you. So what? What's the deal-”

“Everything. It's different. I'm, like, if it'd been _that_? I coulda just... I coulda just told him, y'know, So I didn't think I'd ever meet a guy like you, so I fooled around before. But that's...” It was pathetic. Revy just slumped deeper in the broad-backed creamily-upholstered chair. Its fabric rustled against denim and skin. “That's not how it was.

“It's just... How do you tell a guy about something like that, Eda?”

Eda had no answer. Said nothing at all.

“He'll think I'm filthy. I know it. I know that. I've told girls before; I've seen the look on their faces.” Palms slapped at her face.

It wasn't just that invigorating cold-water splash.

It was a crack.

Once and again and again, amplified with the miserable hot tears.

“Jesus, Revy-”

“What? You think it's stupid? Fuck you-”

“No. I- I don't think it's stupid. I just... I mean-”

“Every guy who's a virgin wants a virgin. That's just how it works.”

“Oh, you read that in a Danielle Steel book or something-”

“That's just how it works, okay? I'm damaged. A guy doesn't want a chick like me. You get that, right? I mean, he'd be disgusted, anyway, if I was just some loose slut who treated a gangbang like some light evening entertainment, but at least- I mean, I dunno, at least he wouldn't... He wouldn't hafta worry about me freaking out, about getting sick just being close to him, even when I- I really like him a lot.

“And what happens if he does the wrong thing, if he touches me wrong, if I just get into one of those spells where I don't want anybody close to me? You know what I'm talkin' about.” Eda sure as hell did; she'd nursed a bruise for a fucking month from it.

Eda was silent.

Not just _quiet_.

Startled even herself that she didn't even hear her own breath, because there _was_ none. It was only when her lungs protested with their stupid atavistic animal _need_ that she even admitted another slow sip.

“I don't know what to tell you, Revy.”

“'cause I'm right-”

“'cause I don't know what to tell you. What? Ya wanna hear some platitude that'll have you here with a goddamn gun to my head, screaming at me about how I was talkin' outta my ass? I don't know shit about what he thinks.

“Maybe, 'cause he's a jap, maybe he'll be _extra_ weird about it. But he's a good guy. I mean, he was... He was really sweet with that vampire nut, right?”

“Yeah.” It was scant comfort. Eda knew it. Felt it. “But, I mean... What if it's like that with him?” Shit, and now Eda was just dumping jet fuel on that psychic bonfire. “What if he doesn't think I'm disgusting? What if he just thinks I'm some broken little doll he needs to take care of?

“Ain't that maybe even worse? At least- at least if I disgust him, maybe he'd still want me-”

“Christ, Revy, what's gotten into you? When'd you turn into such a basket case?” Goddammit, it was hopeless. Revy wouldn't even rise to that.

She wasn't a kicked dogs; kicked dogs still eventually bared their fangs bristled and crunched into your ankle.

“You're right, Eda. 's just... What if you did it?” That made approximately less than no sense on no fewer than three or four billion levels, sprawling out into parallel universes.

“Did _what_?” Eda let herself sag to the right, and then to the left, hoping maybe there'd be a sharp _crack_ and she'd fall through the looking-glass and into wherever the hell _Revy_ was talking to her from.

“You know what I mean, Eda.”

“Christ, Revy, I barely even think you're speaking _English_ right now.”

“Take his cherry.” That was... “You like him, right, Eda? You're always teasing him; always throwing yourself at him. You've- you've got that fuckin' incredible body. Those big titties and that great ass and legs-”

“I know what I've got, Two Hands. Keep it on _yourself_ -”

“That's what I'm talking about. It'll... Like, I was thinking about it. He won't be as disappointed with me if _he's_ had another woman-”

“You're fuckin' pathetic.” For Eda, well, it wasn't only _tough_ love.

It was a croquet mallet to the fore brain.

“Come again, you goddamn bitch-”

“You heard me, Two Hands. I know what it is now, and that's pretty shady and sleazy, even for you.” And Revy was just slumping deeper into the chair, a persecuted child. “I mean, what the fuck? I'd screw him if you'd given up on him, but why the fuck d'ya think I'm always just _teasing_ him?

“It's supposed to be _you_ getting into his pants. And then you say this. I know what it is. I don't need to be a head-shrinker to see what it is. You just don't want to feel guilty about it. You want _him_ to be guilty, so you're trying to get _me_ to be the bad guy and he can say, Well, I'm not a cherry, and you're not, so that's cool.

“But that's bull-”

“Fuck you, Eda-”

“No, fuck _you_. That's just- that's just _perverse_ , okay, and _I_ know perverse.” Eda stabbed a fuchsia-lacquered nail into one _very_ generous breast. It sank deep; it felt like skewering fabric-draped gelatin. “That's just sick. You don't need to tell him _what_ happened to you.

“Fuck, not every girl's got her hymen, _anyway_. I didn't have one.”

“Yeah, well, you were prolly just born a natural slut-”

“Screw you, _Rebecca_.” It was pissing off Eda more than even _she_ felt made sense. It was the cowardice. That's what it was. Seeing Revy shrinking into that childish self-pity. “If you wanna get comfortable with your name, call him Rokuro, and maybe finally just run off and play house somewhere that _isn't_ a squalid hellhole like this, that's gonna be _your_ responsibility.

“I'm not gonna whore myself to him just because _you_ don't wanna feel guilty.”

Revy's silence was something brutally pitiful.

“Yeah. I guess you're right-”

“And don't ask anybody else to do it for you, either, Two Hands. I'm serious. You'll regret doing something _that_ weird. It'll fuck up your relationship.”

“I don't wanna poison him, Eda. I'll fuck him up. If I'm his first time, I- I'll just... He'll regret it, giving it up to me-”

“Yeah, well, that's his goddamn choice. If he regrets it, fuck him. If he whines about it, he really _is_ just a pussy, and you can say, Well, I tried, and _he_ fucked it up. So why don't you put on the big girl panties and just go for it?”

“He's...” Revy was groping for the words. She cradled them in her hands, outstretched; Eda _knew_ , could feel it, also, the unspoken neuroses, the cravings and the hungers and the simple terror. “If... If I...

“If I touch him, and he breaks, what then? He's- he's something... I need him, Eda, all right? I need him. I need him to be _right_ ; he's right, Eda. He's the only _right_ thing in my life. I'm looking up from a real deep pit, and he's the only rung I can hold onto.

“I feel sometimes like I'm gonna hit bottom if I don't have that. I wish he hadn't come. It's so unsure. I wouldn't... There wasn't this shit with Benny. He was just- just too much like _us_. Like Dutch and me. He could look away, say, That's the way of the world, and everything would be okay.

“He's still a greedy fuckin' thief. Rock would give his last dollar to a goddamn grifter if he had the right sob story, just on the off chance the guy was tellin' the truth. Rock doesn't _wanna_ believe the world is like it is.

“And that's... It makes it... Y'know what I mean?”

Yeah.

Eda knew.

“Eda, I don't wanna break him. I don't wanna ruin the- the _light_ there still is inside him, and I'm so scared I will.” She was weeping. Openly. Breath hitched in Revy's chest and the crop top was blackened beyond black with the febrile sweat that plumed up from her skin's every inch.

She was sallow, a sickness festering deep in her.

“Yeah, Revy, I-”

“Do you get it? I think about it sometimes. This... This beautiful garden outside of this landfill of a life. Maybe life _ain't_ only shit. Maybe I'm only living _in_ shit. Maybe he could open it for me, y'know?

“We could leave. I'm not sayin' I... Jesus, what would I do?”

“He's got a college diploma.”

“I never even finished junior high-”

“So fucking what?”

“I'd just ruin his life. Maybe it would be better if we just didn't go any further. 'cause he'll get sick of this life eventually. He'll walk out. I don't think I can just be the housewife waiting for him at home.

“I'd rather just keep him on that shelf, out of my hands, out of the gutter.”

It pissed off Eda.

It did.

She felt it churning her gut. So she stood, stalked to the wet bar, and hammered down a mouthful of the gin from a sharply-chiseled square bottle.

“You're a fuckin' pussy, _Two Hands_. _**Revy**_. That's what you are. You're too goddamn _weak_ to be Rebecca.”

“Yeah.” Revy just nodded. “I think you're right. But I don't wanna drag him to the bottom with me.”

“Pussy- the fuck is that?” Eda's eyes narrowed; there was some shrill chime babbling from the cordless she kept on the bar. “Ah, shit.” A quick hand snatched it up; nothing pissed her off more than a ringing phone. “Eda. Yeah?”

“ _Yo, Eda. It's Dutch._ ” Like anyone else in the city but maybe that psycho russki's golem had a voice that deep.

“Yeah, Dutch. What is it?”

“ _Revy there?_ ” The guy's voice was the familiar languid impenetrable drawl.

“Yeah, she's here. Why? There a job?”

“ _Nah. It's not that. Rock is looking for her. I thought she'd be there._ ” Incredible that anyone could stab their tongue _that_ deep into their cheek.

“Yeah. She is. Rock's looking for her, huh?”

“ _Yeah. I dunno why. He just asked me to help. I'm still responsible for my crew; needed to make sure she wasn't lying dead in a gutter somewhere when she needs to come into work day after tomorrow._ ”

“She's alive.”

“ _Great. I'll tell Rock._ ” The line fell silent; Eda just tossed the cordless' sleek chitinous husk back onto the bar.

“Rock's looking for you, bitch.”

“So what?” Damn, she was acting like a fifteen-year-old.

Then again, wasn't she?

Probably younger than that.

“So, don't be a moron about this. He'll be coming over here, I'm sure-”

“Tell him to fuck off. It was dumb, right, Eda? Dumb to let myself get close? I'll just ruin him-”

“So ruin him and come crying to me when you've done it. Or maybe actually _be_ happy for once. Whatever. I'm sick of listening to you whine. So either go home with Rock or fool around with me. Make all this shit worth my while. What'll it be?” Eda stood there, arms wound around her chest, peering down with cold woad eyes at the five-and-a-half foot pain in her ass sitting in her chair.

“Guess there's always room at the bottom for more.” Revy finally answered with a blink.

 


End file.
